III. CEP
As I have for the past ten years or so, each day begins at roughly 5:45 each morning as my alarm screeches, alerting me to the fact that I need to get up and shower so that I can be at Bowen by 7:00. I'm there for a couple of hours, and back again at 3:00 to watch the kids again until 6:00. For those counting, that's five hours a day, with a large gap in the middle (that I have filled with various things over the years, but is now mostly comprised of school). On days that school isn't in session (breaks or weather-related closings), we are open from 7:00am - 6:00pm, and most of the staff works six-to-eight hour shifts. This is true for summer break as well. We play games, go on field trips, do arts and crafts, and generally just try and provide the kids with a positive environment.
This is the second or third time I've tried writing this post. The previous two attempts came off far more negative and whiny than I intended. Hopefully this one reads a bit less dramatic. My enthusiasm for this position certainly has waned over the past couple of years, which is an experience I imagine most people will have after ten or more years doing mostly anything. I truly and completely believe that working at Bowen and Zachary Taylor over the past decade has been an incredibly and overwhelmingly positive experience. But I've been experience some burnout lately, and it seems pretty clear to me that I need something to change.
This could be the case for any number of reasons, but two things in particular seem to bother me more than anything else. Although the kids change somewhat year-to-year, every day at work feels like the same day that I've lived thousands of times before. We utilize the same spaces, play a lot of the same games, go on the same field trips, deal with the same behavior issues, eat the same snacks, etc. The list goes on and on. On top of that, and I'm fully aware that this may be a case of rose-colored glasses, but the kids seem to be much more aggressively mean to one another, and that just kinda sucks to be around all the time.
With that being said, I don't want to quit. There are a number of good reasons, but they all boil down to the fact that this is a very convenient job for somebody in college.. I'm considering scaling back my hours a bit; maybe only working half-days during the summer and/or maybe only working the afternoon shift when the next school year begins. Whatever ends up happening, though, this feels like the time commitment in my life most able to be trimmed down somewhat.
Tomorrow's post is going to briefly go over the thing on which I'm spent the largest percentage of my life.
This could be the case for any number of reasons, but two things in particular seem to bother me more than anything else. Although the kids change somewhat year-to-year, every day at work feels like the same day that I've lived thousands of times before. We utilize the same spaces, play a lot of the same games, go on the same field trips, deal with the same behavior issues, eat the same snacks, etc. The list goes on and on. On top of that, and I'm fully aware that this may be a case of rose-colored glasses, but the kids seem to be much more aggressively mean to one another, and that just kinda sucks to be around all the time.
With that being said, I don't want to quit. There are a number of good reasons, but they all boil down to the fact that this is a very convenient job for somebody in college.. I'm considering scaling back my hours a bit; maybe only working half-days during the summer and/or maybe only working the afternoon shift when the next school year begins. Whatever ends up happening, though, this feels like the time commitment in my life most able to be trimmed down somewhat.
Tomorrow's post is going to briefly go over the thing on which I'm spent the largest percentage of my life.
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